The Obama administration’s efforts to improve relations with Iran hit a roadblock Saturday when a court in Tehran revealed it had convicted an American journalist of spying and sentenced her to eight years in prison.
Roxana Saberi, 31, who also holds Iranian citizenship, has lived in Iran for six years and has reported from there for various international news organizations, including National Public Radio and the BBC.
The Fargo, N.D., native was arrested in January for working as a journalist in the Islamic republic after her credentials had expired. Earlier this month, an Iranian judge charged her with spying for the United States.
The trial on the spying charge began at the Revolutionary Court on Monday, just days before the conviction. Miss Saberi’s attorney, Abdolsamad Khorramshahi, said he will appeal the verdict.
President Obama, who is attending an Americas summit in Trinidad, was “deeply disappointed” by the conviction, the White House said.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who in the past few weeks made several personal appeals to Iranian officials to free Miss Saberi, also expressed disappointment, but vowed to continue efforts to win her freedom.
“We will continue to vigorously raise our concerns to the Iranian government,” Mrs. Clinton said.
The journalist’s father, Reza Saberi, who met her at Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison on April 6, said she was tricked into signing a confession that led to her conviction.
“She was deceived,” he told NPR from Iran. “She is quite depressed about this matter, and she wants to go on a hunger strike. And if she does, she is so frail it can be very dangerous to her health.”
Mr. Saberi, who was not allowed to witness the closed-door trial, said his daughter was convicted Wednesday, but her attorneys were informed of the ruling only Saturday.
A Web site devoted to the campaign to free Miss Saberi, www.freeroxana.net, says she was chosen Miss North Dakota in 1997 and was among the top-10 finalists in Miss America 1998. Her father was born in Iran, and her mother, Akiko, is from Japan.
The United States cut off relations with Iran after the 1979 Islamic Revolution and the seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. Relations worsened after the administration of President George W. Bush included Iran in an “axis of evil” along with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and North Korea.
U.S. dealings with Iran are carried out through the Swiss Embassy in Tehran.
Iran has resisted international pressure to give up its nuclear program, especially its plan to enrich uranium, drawing U.N. sanctions. Washington says Tehran seeks to produce nuclear weapons. Iran denies the claim, saying its nuclear program is for electricity generation.
President Obama has offered to open direct talks with Iran on nuclear and other issues. Iran was invited to participate in a multinational conference on Afghanistan last month. And Washington also has decided to join European-led talks with Iran on its nuclear program.
The U.S. envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard C. Holbrooke, told Reuters news agency Saturday that he had a short informal meeting with Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki in Tokyo on Friday during a donors meeting on Pakistan.
Iran’s hard-line president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has welcomed the U.S. moves, and on Wednesday offered to present a new package of proposals to resolve the nuclear dispute.
Mr. Ahmadinejad is seeking a second term in office in the presidential election scheduled for June, but moderate reformists, who favor restoring normal relations with the U.S., hope to unseat him, cashing in on the people’s growing resentment over the struggling economy and unemployment.
Iran has jailed many American visitors for weeks and months in the past. The previous high-profile detention of an American by Iran occurred in 2007, when Haleh Esfandiari, director of the Middle East Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, was arrested on espionage charges while visiting her ailing 93-year-old mother in May and was held in solitary confinement in the Evin Prison for 110 days. She was freed in August 2007 after several U.S. officials made direct appeals to Iran. Wilson center president Lee Hamilton, a former Democratic member of Congress from Indiana, wrote Mr. Ahmadinejad, seeking her release.
Parnaz Azima, an Iranian-American correspondent for U.S. government-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, had her passport seized when she arrived in Tehran in January 2007. Her passport was returned nine months later, and she was allowed to leave the country. But Ms. Azima was still charged with “undermining national security,” making it difficult for her to return to Iran, according to media freedom group Reporters Without Borders.
According to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, seven journalists and two bloggers are currently in prison in Iran.
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